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The Doctrines in the Discipline: a Study of the Forgotten Theological Presuppositions of American Methodism

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The Doctrines in the Discipline: a Study of the Forgotten Theological Presuppositions of American Methodism The Doctrines in the Discipline: a study of the forgotten theological presuppositions of American Methodism FRANK BAKER Associate Professor of English Church History /. The Birth of the American Methodist Church. The hastily summoned Methodist preachers who huddled together in a wintry Baltimore that Christmas of 1784 issued their own decla­ ration of independence. For all the thousands of miles of ocean separating them from England they had so far followed the precedents and accepted the oversight of Mr. Wesley. So it had been for more than a decade. Now, apparently with Wesley's agreement, and even on his suggestion transmitted by Dr. Thomas Coke, they made a deliberate attempt to erect a specific organization for American Methodism, fraternally linked with British Methodism but quite in­ dependent of its control. Now at last they had their own spiritual leaders in Coke and Asbury—technically equal in authority, but far from equal in the allegiance of their colleagues. (One of the ambitious little doctor's drawbacks in the eyes of the American preachers was that he functioned as Wesley's shadow, albeit a very substantial shadow, and one that, like Peter Pan's, occasionally slipped out of the control of its owner.) In 1784 the Methodist Episcopal Church secured its own national leadership, its own power to perpetuate a ministry, its own ecclesiastical organization, and also took an immense step forward in creating its own ethos. A few of the preachers doubted whether the throwing off of parental restraints (and support) by this eager Methodist adolescent was wise and timely. Thomas Haskins spoke for others when he confided to his journal : "Oh, how tottering I see Methodism now !" Their two bishops managed to hold a precarious balance on the ecclesiastical fence without falling off, either on the one side of retain­ ing full theoretical control of American Methodism for Wesley, or on the other of denying him any voice at all. At the very least they insisted that the decencies should be preserved and that, having successfully thrown Mr. Wesley to the ground, they should not kick him. He was therefore indulged with an occasional kindly reference but no actual power. Not until 1787 did the preachers explicitly 40 reject their 1784 agreement "in matters belonging to Church govern­ ment to obey [Wesley's] commands." Perhaps, however, this original agreement should have been regarded rather as a courteous gesture than as a firm commitment. The first official document embodying the organization of the new church used the title and followed the pattern of its British equivalent, though with the names of Coke and Asbury replacing those of the Wesleys. It was published in 1785 as Minutes of several conversa*- tions between the Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D., the Rev. Francis Asbury and others. The extent to which this depended upon Wesley's so-called "Large Minutes" is convincingly demonstrated by the parallel arrangement of the two documents in the appendix to Bishop Tigert's Constitutional History of American Episcopal Methodism. The ferment of independence was strongly at work, however, in what was omitted, what was altered, and what was introduced, in­ cluding especially the subtitle—"composing a Form of Discipline". The second edition appeared in 1786 as an appendix to the "Ameri­ can" edition of Wesley's Sunday Service. This also retained some reminiscence of the British pattern, but experimented with a different title, which retained little of Wesley's apart from the word "Minutes" : "The General Minutes of the Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, forming the constitution of the said Church." Thereafter, for the remainder of Wesley's lifetime, his example was completely forsaken, and the following five editions of the American Methodist preachers' ecclesiastical handbook discarded Wesley's title for their own sub-title, being published as A Form of Discipline for the Ministers, Preachers, and Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. All this time the administrative discipline of American Methodism was evolving, and echoes of Wesley in specific regulations steadily and inevitably diminished. The one area where his influence per­ sisted was that of doctrine. Here conditions in America were not markedly different from those in England, and indeed some of the theological battles of the parent society were later re-enacted by her daughter church, when the old weapons forged by Wesley proved to have retained their cutting edge. The dependence of American Methodism upon Wesley's theology has been both deliberately ob­ scured and strangely forgotten by succeeding generations, and only in our own day is it once more receiving careful attention. The extent of this dependence is somewhat difficult to trace, but one of the most interesting clues is to be found in the history of the Discipline. 41 We have seen that the founding fathers of the Methodist Episco­ pal Church transformed Wesley's Minutes into their Discipline. At the American Conference next but one after his death another signifi­ cant change was made in the title. Instead of A Form of Discipline the eighth edition of 1792 introduced the title that became the standard or model for most branches of American Methodism until our own day : The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episco­ pal Church in America. The operative word in this change, of course, is "doctrines". The dead founder of Methodism is rarely mentioned in the volume, but in its doctrines, thus emphasized by the altered title, we become aware of his dominating though unseen influence, a ghost walking the Discipline for all succeeding genera­ tions, his teaching enshrined though his identity almost forgotten. Even when in 1812 Wesley's theological bones were disinterred from the Discipline and buried in a grassed-over grave exceedingly difficult for later Methodists to discover, his spirit could not fully be exorcised. Here, however, I suspect that my analogy is somewhat hard to follow for those who have not shared with me the excitement of searching out Wesley's doctrinal resting place in a mysterious publi­ cation entitled, accurately but inadequately, A Collection of Interest­ ing Tracts. I will therefore return from the realms of fantasy to the prosaic task of the historian, endeavoring to trace the thread of Wesley's theology through the maze of the successive issues of the Methodist Discipline. II. Doctrinal Sections in the Disciplines. The Minutes of 1785 contained no formal outline of belief, but the document did echo most of the doctrinal passages of Wesley's "Large Minutes". Three sections in particular call for mention. A verbatim reprint of Wesley's statement about the rise of Method­ ism, published originally in the annual Minutes for 1765 and in­ corporated with some minor changes into the "Large Minutes" from 1770 onwards, appeared thus : In 1729, two young men, reading the Bible, saw they could not be saved without holiness, followed after it, and incited others so to do. In 1737 they saw holiness comes by faith. They saw likewise, that men are justified, before they are sanctified: but still holiness was their point. God then thrust them out, utterly against their will, to raise an holy people. When Satan could no otherwise hinder this, he threw Calvinism in the way; and then Antinomianism, which strikes directly at the root of all holiness. 42 At the very least this makes clear the double Methodist emphasis upon evangelical theology and the pursuit of holiness, as well as drawing attention to some of the snares waiting to entangle the feet of unwary Protestant pilgrims who believe that salvation comes and stays by faith alone. Certainly it offers no encouragement to those Methodists who would banish theology from the pew and even from the pulpit, to languish only in the rarefied atmosphere of the seminary. The sentence about Calvinism and Antinomianism was omitted from the Disciplines of 1787, 1788, and 1789—presumably to remove an additional snare from the path of the unlearned rather than because Satan no longer wielded those weapons. In the 1790 Discipline this section was transferred to the opening address, "To the Members of the Methodist Societies in the United States", though it was not made clear that the American Methodist bishops who signed that address were not in fact the authors of the statement, but had employed the services of a ghost-writer. Not until 1796 were quotation marks added, together with a footnote which stated, "These are the words of Messrs. Wesleys themselves." And not until 1948 was this "historical statement" replaced by one emphasiz­ ing Wesley's Aldersgate experience. Other unacknowledged statements from Wesley's publications, similarly stressing points of doctrine, were carried over from the 1785 Minutes into the later Disciplines. The two most important were deemed worthy of publication as separate sections in the volumes of 1787 and its successors. "Of the Rise of Methodism" formed Section I of the 1787 Discipline, "Against Antinomianism" Section XVI, and "On Perfection" Section XXII. Of these latter doctrinal sections the first emphasized the need for good works as at least a condition of entering into and remaining in a state of salvation. The second urged: "Let us strongly and explicitly exhort all believers to go on to Perfection." Both were taken almost word for word from Wesley's "Large Minutes" by way of the 1785 American Minutes. Strangely enough, although these two important state­ ments formed an integral element of the official constitution of American Methodism from 1784 until after the epochal General Conference of 1808, their existence was completely overlooked by the classic historians of the Discipline, Robert Emory and David Sherman, and only partly realized in the masterly work of John J.
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